


Captain America and the Case of the Changing Betty Ross!

by Franzbibliothek



Category: Captain America (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:29:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzbibliothek/pseuds/Franzbibliothek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The harrowing tale of how Betty Ross went from being Captain America's main female lead in the golden age to being mistaken for Peggy Carter by the internet. This story includes unexplained name changes, hair changes, job changes and body changes!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain America and the Case of the Changing Betty Ross!

As I was surfing around on the internet, I happened upon an image of a golden age Captain America cover. It was pretty typical, with Red Skull tying up Bucky and a blonde woman. What was odd though was the image's caption labeled the two figures as Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter. This is an understandable error considering Peggy Carter's prevalence as Cap's WWII love-interest; however the blonde agent who pops up repeatedly in golden age Captain America comics is not in fact Peggy Carter, but Betty Ross (not the scientist and daughter of General Ross from the Incredible Hulk, though the first Betty Ross has been retconned as being the great-aunt of this later Betty).

_It actually says Betty's name on the cover, so I take that back, there's no excuse._

 So why isn't Betty mentioned that much, especially considering she would become a super-heroine in her own right towards the end of original Captain America comic run? Well that is a long and convoluted story that took some detective work worthy of Captain America himself:

Betty Ross is introduced in the Captain America issue #1 as an FBI agent, helping Cap and Bucky capture Sando and Omar, and would become one of the four recurring characters in the early Captain America comics alongside Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Sgt. Duffy.

 Unfortunately even by 1940s standards (which are higher than you might think if you actually look at some of the 1940 super-heroines) Betty Ross' primary role in whatever story she appears is to attempt to investigate something, usually by wandering in some isolated location, where she gets captured with ridiculous ease and frequency. This actually leads to Steve Rogers telling Bucky that they should secretly follow Betty, because she will lead them directly to the bad guys.

 

_Betty, pirates aren't even a thing in the 1940s, how did you manage this?_

_What, were there no convenient railroad tracks nearby?_

_Even Betty's tired of this damsel in distress bullshit_

 Relationship-wise the reader is supposed to _assume_ that the set-up is very much like golden age Lois and Superman/Clark Kent, where she is attracted to Captain America but not to bumbling Pvt. Steve Rogers, but the stories themselves are never very clear. She has a friendly relationship with Captain America, and attempts to give him a kiss of gratitude at one point (which Cap doesn't want by the way), but their relationship is professional otherwise. On the other hand she appears to have a very friendly if not quite a romantic relationship with Pvt. Rogers. In one issue she is referred to as Steve Roger's girl friend, but in the same issue the Statue of Liberty is also referred to as America's girl friend, so I'm assuming they're using the term loosely. In _The Illustrated History: Superhero Comics of the Golden Age,_ she is referred to as a 'sometime love-interest', because even the scholars can't quite figure out where the line between writer intent and actual execution should be drawn.

_This is as intense as Cap and Betty's romance gets, at least in the 24 issues I've read all the way through_

_Look at Betty offering to go out of her way to get Steve and Bucky larger parts_

 

_Look at her explicitly calling Steve her friend and feeling obligated to introduce her dance partner to him. She clearly doesn't care about Pvt. Steve Rogers at all._

 In early issues she would appear in one story per issue, (golden age comics include multiple stories in a single issue) but as the number of stories actually featuring Cap fluctuated so would her appearances. Sometimes she would appear in multiple stories in a single issue then sometimes none at all. Still, her function remains more or less the same: a danger magnet, who in one instance managed to date the villain of the story, two issues in a row! Not to say she doesn't have her moments of knocking people out with the butt of her gun or solving the mystery, but these instances are annoyingly limited. Though she does consistently appears in rather snazzy red dresses, which I am willing to bet Agent Carter's stunning red dress in _Captain America: The First Avenger_ is a reference to.

 Her last appearance during WWII would be in Captain America issue #44 (1945), and according to the Captain America index she does not show up again until Captain America issue #61 (1947). In this post-war story though she is now listed as Betsy Ross, with the note at the bottom of the index only providing this explanation: “Betty Ross is now called 'Betsy Ross' through the rest of her appearances”. Since Stan Lee is listed as the writer of this story, he can be held responsible for the rather inexplicable change, which I guess is to make the Betsy Ross (the woman credited with making the American flag) allusion more on the nose.

 Now in the next issue the newly re-introduced Betsy Ross decides to become a teacher (because this is post-WWII and we don't need women in the FBI anymore) at Lee school where Steve Rogers also teaches and Bucky attends. From thereon she becomes a regular supporting character until the events of Captain America issue #66, also written by Stan Lee, where Bucky is shot trying to stop a bank robbery, and though he survives, he needs time to recover. Captain America needing a partner, reveals his secret identity to Betsy Ross, and trains her to become the super-heroine Golden Girl. They stop the story's villain and Bucky grants Golden Girl his blessing. So Betsy Ross, now known as Golden Girl, fights alongside Cap until the Captain America comic is canceled in 1950 with Captain America issue #75, though technically her last appearance is issue #73.

_Here's an official illustration of Betsy's Golden Girl outfit (Why isn't it red?)_

So that wasn't too weird until we get to the short-lived revival of the Captain America comic in 1954 under Atlas Comics, four years after Captain America's original cancellation. The comic tries to recapture Cap's past popularity by re-using the earlier Captain America story formula, which mean Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes rejoin the army, now to fight communists. We are then introduced to Betsy Ross, a red-headed reporter that Bucky helpfully informs us admires Captain America, but not Pvt. Steve Rogers. No explanation is given as to Betsy Ross' radical changes in career/hair color/memories. The revival was canceled after just three issues, with new red-head Betsy only appearing in one story. (Spoilers, in the story Cap and Bucky follow her secretly and she leads them directly to the bad guy where she is promptly held hostage)

_Apparently women can invert their hair and dress color at will.The more you know._

Betsy Ross then fades into relative obscurity, even when Captain America is revived with far greater success in 1963. For reasons I haven't come across yet, Stan Lee and/or Jack Kirby decided to invent a new, but rather similar woman from Steve's past, introducing Peggy Carter in an extended flashback sequence, in Tales of Suspense issue #77. Since then Peggy has been the default love-interest of Steve Roger's WWII memories and Betty/Betsy Ross has her original part of Captain America's World War II adventures largely erased.

Stay tuned for part 2, where Golden Girl retroactively becomes the superhero identity of a different woman altogether, and Betsy Ross ends up married to Captain America after all…

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this originally in a fit of rage when I saw someone mistake Betty Ross for Peggy Carter, and realized that there are a great deal of people who probably don't know that she existed. Maybe this will spark a revolution and in Season 2 of Agent Carter we can get FBI Agent Betty Ross (who's probably really sick of the jokes) strike a professional rivalry with Peggy Carter, since the OSS (the real-life intelligence gathering organization that the SSR is clearly a reference to) had a bitter rivalry with the FBI but throughout the season they come to respect and even like each other and both become heads of their respective organizations (and kiss a lot probably)


End file.
